Allophone patients' voice: an exploratory study of their experiences with healthcare interpreters in Spain
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37536/FITISPos-IJ.2023.10.1.349Keywords:
professional healthcare interpreter, Spanish legislation, COVID-19, non-speaking Spanish patients’ perspective, communication barriersAbstract
The events we have experienced in recent years, such as the COVID-19 health pandemic or the Russia and Ukraine war, have led to changes in the work of translators and interpreters in public services. In the medical field, where the limits of the interpreter's role have always been blurred, the immediacy of the communication of news as it happened during the pandemic, the understanding of the restrictions and the new ways of multilingual and multicultural exchanges forced a rapid adaptation to the new working conditions of medical translators and interpreters. Hence, professional interpreting in healthcare needed -and needs due to migratory movements- a specific legislation for an adequate provision of interpreting services to put an end to access, linguistic and cultural barriers encountered by non-Spanish speaking patients. This paper focuses on the experience of non-Spanish speaking patients to explore the reality they face and to show the consequences of not using interpreters or using ad-hoc interpreters in healthcare services. This study also draws attention to the benefits of using professional interpreters to provide an adequate quality care and to describe the challenges of the current professional interpreting situation in Spain.
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